there is one ridiculous Baron whose proclivity for young boys is aided by his reading list in one particular genre: it is the Boy's-Castaway-Island scenario that fascinates him. Whenever we encounter the Baron, he's likely to be asking if a current escort reminds the narrator of one of his desert-island idylls. Grown men. Some wearing monocles. Boy castaways. Berlin. Nazis. Isherwood makes it impossible not to laugh, and yet...) As it happens William and Arthur glimpse Otto from a window when Arthur is summonsed to Berlin police headquarters for a, er, meeting. Arthur is so nervous he asks William to accompany him, which our man does. There’s a typically light-hearted / facetious exchange as they emerge from the restaurant where they have a boozy lunch before going into police HQ: Well, maybe this attitude of regret was appropriate enough for Isherwood in later life, but I don’t think we need to be limited by his perspective. Things have moved on since he wrote that. I can think of at least two comic movies about the Nazis which have been well received in our times ( Jojo Rabbit and Life is Beautiful) and nobody seems to have questioned the 1972 movie Cabaret for its comic or silly interludes. Poi, scoppiai a ridere. Ridemmo ambedue. In quel momento l’avrei abbracciato. Avevamo, come si suol dire, messo il dito sulla piaga, una buona volta, e il nostro sollievo era così grande che eravamo come due giovani che si fossero fatti una dichiarazione d’amore.

William ha lasciato l’Inghilterra per allontanarsi dalla famiglia e vivere l’avventura. Si può dire che la trova: locali notturni, teatro e cabaret, il nazismo che dilaga inquietante, cene al ristorante bevendo champagne, ma anche birrerie, una misteriosa dame francese (Margot), complotti e ricatti, aristocratici omosessuali, pedinamenti, retate, omicidi, e dopo l’incendio del Reichstag, meglio tornare a casa. An entertainment set during the growth of the Nazi party? It actually works too. Published before things went horribly wrong in Europe this collection of events chronicling the friendship of Mr Norris and Mr Bradshaw stands the test of time and history remarkably well. In Berlin in 1932, he also began an important relationship with Heinz Neddermeyer, a young German with whom he fled the Nazis in 1933. England refused entry to Neddermeyer on his second visit in 1934, and the pair moved restlessly about Europe until the Gestapo arrested Neddermeyer in May 1937 and then finally separated them. In 1953, he fell in love with Don Bachardy, an eighteen-year-old college student born and raised in Los Angeles. They were to remain together until Isherwood’s death. In 1961, Isherwood and completed the final revisions to his new novel Down There on a Visit (1962). Their relationship nearly ended in 1963, and Isherwood moved out of their Santa Monica house. This dark period underpins Isherwood’s masterpiece A Single Man (1964). Sally Bowles & Co came later, c 1939, when our author "got the political pittcha." Although the musical "Cabaret" is a rouser with everyone singing that life is a cabaret ole chun, Isherwood focused on the lost and rejected. He caught the tormented, self-destructive spirit of Berlin which Broadway excised. He'd gone to Berlin because of the favorable money-exchange. And, coming from a strangulating UK environment where you faced jail if caught in the bushes with a boy, he read that anything went in Berlin. As Gerald Hamilton said, "We live in stirring times. Tea-stirring times."Knowing that Isherwood was gay, and would go on to become something of a gay icon, changes the way we read the book. There is the obviously gay character, Baron von Pregnitz and his villa full of tanned half-naked young men. That’s quite a hauntingly sensual image. Mr Norris Changes Trains was published in 1933 and (along with Goodbye to Berlin) is drawn from Isherwood's experiences as an expatriate living in Berlin during the early 1930s. William’s favourite pastime becomes watching Mr Norris, and, gosh, is that boy observant! He notices everything, every furtive glance, every twitch of the mouth, every tense muscle.

Isherwood wasn't known in the US until 1951 when John Van Druten took a couple of his Berlin stories and wrote the play "I Am a Camera," later a musicom. He told an interviewer, "I've never had a great success at first with anything I've written." He may have been the earliest to write about Berlin in the 30s, but the forgotten and slighted Robert McAlmon caught the nether-scene, steeped in drugs and unzippered frolics ten years earlier in "Miss Knight and Others," which, for years, was unpublished here.Christopher Isherwood wrote the fictional "Mr Norris Changes Trains" based on his experiences in Berlin in the early 1930s. He left England to work in Berlin as an English tutor since Berlin was much more liberal toward homosexuals. The character William Bradshaw (named after Isherwood's middle names) acts as a narrator and an observer in the book.

Isherwood, Christopher (1963) [1945]. The Berlin Stories. New York City: New Directions. ISBN 0-8112-0070-1. LCCN 55-2508– via Internet Archive. If I were Chris, I wouldn’t beat myself about it so much. His descriptions of the state of the decaying German society were powerful. And I felt the sense of impending doom. (Although it was maybe because I knew how it all escalated). Anyway, he wouldn’t be the only one to dismiss the seriousness of the situation. How do you think Chamberlain felt? Jean Ross later claimed the political indifference of the Sally Bowles character more closely resembled Isherwood and his hedonistic friends, [9] many of whom "fluttered around town exclaiming how sexy the storm troopers looked in their uniforms." [10] Disordine, miseria, lezioni private di inglese, riunioni di comunisti, sedute private masochistiche con frusta e stivali, interrogatori di polizia, orge, raggiri e misteri, fughe e ritorni: “I am a camera”, ha scritto Isherwood.Peter Parker notes that Ross "claimed that Isherwood 'grossly underrated' her singing abilities, but her family agreed that this was one aspect of Sally Bowles that Isherwood got absolutely right". [23] The novel follows the movements of William Bradshaw, its narrator, who meets a nervous-looking man named Arthur Norris on a train going from the Netherlands to Germany. As they approach the frontier William strikes up a conversation with Mr Norris, who wears an ill-fitting wig and carries a suspect passport. I heartily recommend Mr Norris Changes Trains, it's an engaging tale which is also historically fascinating through its powerful evocation of the atmosphere of Berlin during the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s. Gray, Margaret (20 July 2016). "50 years of 'Cabaret': How the 1966 musical keeps sharpening its edges for modern times". Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, California . Retrieved 11 February 2022. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-05-20 08:05:55 Boxid IA40118214 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier

Paul Bowles was an American writer who wrote the novel The Sheltering Sky. [15] Isherwood appropriated his surname for the character of Sally Bowles. [16] Doyle, Rachel (12 April 2013). "Looking for Christopher Isherwood's Berlin". The New York Times. New York City. p.TR10 . Retrieved 11 February 2022.I liked this book a lot but maybe I’m wrong to like it. Isherwood himself ended up hating it saying it was dishonest and shallow. I think he is being too hard on himself. Literally on himself, because the narrator, William Bradshaw, is more than just an alter-ego; it’s the author himself. Isherwood came to the conclusion that it was William who was the villain of the novel, insensitive to the misery and horror that was surrounding him in the prewar Germany. Ho ritrovato temi e umori, atmosfera e situazioni del romanzo di Isherwood perfettamente riportate nella bella serie TV tedesca Babylon Berlin, che però ha tutt’altra fonte d’ispirazione (i romanzi di Volker Kutscher). Ma guardarla era un po’ come ritornare nelle Storie Berlinesi di Isherwood, il nome collettivo col quale si includono sia questo romanzo che l’altro Addio a Berlino (dal quale è invece liberamente tratto il musical e il film Cabaret). Più avanti il lettore apprende che il signor Norris è un masochista. E magari è proprio per questo che va a Berlino: sembra il posto giusto nel giusto momento in cui trovarsi. Anni lives with Otto, her pimp, an enormously strong, good-natured working class man, middleweight champion of his local boxing club (p.57). It is a recurring comic motif that he insists on shaking William’s hand whenever they meet, and crushes it so hard, it takes a while for William to recover feeling in it. Or slaps people so hard on the shoulder that they nearly fall over.